HOTSEAT- Golden gal: Olympian Shoop brings home Beijing bling

Nearly 60 years after Norma Desmond said the immortal words, "I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille," Olympic rower Lindsay Shoop takes the prize for best line uttered while descending a staircase this side of Sunset Boulevard. As she came down the stairs of her parents' Albemarle home for her Hotseat interview, Shoop said, "Do you like my necklace?"

Of course, it wasn't just any bauble hanging from her neck. Indeed, for making a dramatic entrance, there's nothing like an Olympic gold medal.

"People always want to touch it, put it around their necks," says Shoop. "I've hardly taken it off. The ribbon is already getting a little frayed from showing it off so much."

In 2001, the prospect of Shoop toting such prestigious hardware seemed distant. Though she had been a star volleyballer at the Covenant School, the Charlottesville native figured she'd forego the rigorous training schedule of a student-athlete in order focus on academics at the University of Virginia. However, she eventually found the pull of athletic competition too strong.

"All my friends were athletes," she says, "and since I'm tall everyone assumed I was an athlete. It really made me miss being part of a team."

Luckily for Shoop, she would run into UVA rowing coach Kevin Sauer on Grounds one day.

"As soon as he heard there was a First Year girl who was 6' 1" and not playing a sport, he tried to get me to row," she says. "So around that time, I ran into him and he told me, 'It's never too late.'"

So, in her Third Year at UVA, she joined the women's eight team. It didn't take long for her to make a splash.

Shoop twice earned first-team All-American honors during her UVA career, in both 2003 and 2004, and went on to win three more ACC Championships wearing the orange and blue. Only two years after taking to the water, she was wearing the red, white, and blue as a member of the U.S. National team.

Still, countless hours spent on the water, and in the weight room could not have trained her for the moment she and her teammates would win an Olympic gold medal.

"When they put the gold medal around your neck," she explains, "it's as if the medal itself has this field of energy around it that just overpowers you. My right leg began to shake, and I just could not stop crying. My definition of human emotion has expanded."

The thrill of victory was so strong, in fact, as to be addictive.

"It won't be long," Shoop says, "before I start training for London in 2012."

Age: 27

What do you like best about Charlottesville? Access to an airport. I live in Princeton, New Jersey these days, and that's an island compared to Charlottesville.

Least? The airport doesn't go many places.

Favorite hangout here? St. Maarten's Cafe. The best drinks, the best wings, and it's okay that it doesn't have any windows.